NEWS

2017.

FRANKNESS OF BEAUTY - exhibition in Vrbovec at the Open University - from October 13 to November 10, 2017.

Frankness of Beauty

The opus of ceramicist and painter Ljerka Njerš holds a special place in contemporary Croatian art, and speaks of the significance of diversity, synthesis and symbiosis of different art techniques, mediums and materials in today's ungrateful time of narrow specialization. The artist's opus should therefore not be viewed only through the prism of unifying different kinds of applied art, but through a lasting desire to experiment and an openness to new possibilities in materials, genres and formatting techniques. The almost renaissance aspect of her artistic work is never lost in the quantity of artifacts, but is entirely subordinate to the idea of artistic perfection and the abstracting of motives into stylized and uniform sights – regardless of whether she creates in faience, maiolica, raku ceramics, glass, monotypes, silk painting, or in her latest work, a blend of photography and modern technology.
Thus, when the art historian Ivanka Reberski asserted that such a sublimated purity of lines and shapes, whether they are floral motifs, the female figure or landscape, „has not been seen in our art practice since the times of secession and art déco, and even out of the artists of that era very few can match her“, such a laud had its concrete and easily confirmable ground in the artist's opus. I have once already noticed that the specificity of Ljerka Njerš's work is the overcoming of all possible limitations of a chosen medium and material, so it is sometimes hard to see at first glance whether we are looking at a painting, watercolour, or painted silk; a drawing, watercolour or monotype; clay or porcelain. In this fascinating and easy playing with the possibilities of a given material, Ljerka Njerš almost regularly paints on ceramics and raku, draws on glass, while she seeks to realize a sense of volume and space through a complex stringing of plans in the frames of landscape paintings on silk or nudes on small porcelain tablets and reliefs, in the clash of smooth and coarse glass glazes. For her, the two-dimensional aspect of a piece doesn't seem to exist, and she pursues working around it as much as possible, to introduce the viewer into a world resting on the ancient models of ideal beauty, where beauty is one of the necessary virtues.
The concept of reduced and stylized landscape without concrete geographical or architectural topos, filled with flowers, diverse trees, white doves, angels and semi-sitting or reclining female nudes symbolically signify the idea of a synthesis of nature and an evocation of permanent sources of beauty. The critic Vladimir Crnković stresses that „all of the artist's nudes are always specifically unreal and abstract, transformed into ideal visions“, open to the renaissance metaphor of the so-called Garden of Eden, but also nearing the stylization of drawing and colouring chosen in the tradition of fauvism and Matisse. Regardless of the material and medium she chooses, the basic features of this artist's handwriting are tied to the classical ideas of proportion, harmony and balance in the composition of works of art.
In the newest cycle of painted silk, Ljerka Njerš surrenders to freely connecting fragments of landscape, water, vegetation and skies, and through the concept of colouristic pervasion and complementarity of colour she creates works of an exceptionally sensual, lyrical and at the same time expressive level of experience. In the entire opus the structural form of landscape has been brought to perfection, ofen employing the golden section, while a play with vertical, linear, aerial and colouristic perspective can be readily observed in the painted silk cycle.
What sets apart the art and great skill of Ljerka Njerš in contemporary Croatian art is not only her remarkable ability in synthesis and invention, but also her freedom from trends and styles. She has always been intensely interested in matter and an exhaustive span of the possibilities of expression in one material, where the author's subtle iconography (I. Reberski) occurred as a natural and simple part of creation. With no pathetic narrative or the use of overly decorative shapes and colours, Ljerka Njerš has managed to create an opus which in each of its fragments speaks of the beauty of the whole, the idea of nature as a metaphor for continued creation and the regeneration of life, and where sensualism and vitalism are positively balanced principles of creating.
Iva Körbler

EXHIBITION OF AUTOPORTRAITS IN SAMOBOR

2016.

EXHIBITION IN VUKOVAR

*CERAMICA MULTIPLEX - City museum Varaždin 2016.

International exhibition CERAMICA MULTIPLEX 2016 main event V. International Festival of Postmodern Ceramics 2015/2016. which took place in the exhibition halls of the City Museum of Varazdin. Organized by the Croatian Ceramic Association Kerameikon, the exhibition brought together a large number of participants from around the world who have shown with their works how ceramics is exciting, diverse, specific and sometimes very individual kind of art. Ceramics as well as other interested of public the exhibition was creative experience that stimulates own creativity.

Ceramics, glass and silk – something like earth, water and air: from the weight of the primal substance ‘from which we come and to which we shall return’, via the part taken by light in the transformation of this gravity to the hovering levity of wind and wing. Metaphors burn up from the fire, for the flame to be able to be renewed. With some thirty works in ceramics, glass and silk, Ljerka Njerš shows a selection made from the last two years of her work. The irresistible challenge of substance is here tripled. Substance, matter, offers the stimulus of its properties, but also bends to the author’s will, incorporated into the unique and superior world of her forms.

Ljerka Njerš, who took a degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, having learned from Croatia’s most important artists, with the finishing touch placed by Marino Tartaglia – has nevertheless always heeded to the call of some other materials. Not so much canvas and paper, neutral support materials, although she ranged over them freely, with a great gift for drawing and propensity for colourism. Ever since her first independent appearance, in 1962, she has been particularly interested in the relationship between what is called pure and applied or use art. The ‘pure’ is offered, as it were, on a plate, the ‘applied’ is translated to a level above that of use. The ancient history of fired earth, ceramics, porcelain – and then of glass and textile – has found in the work of Ljerka Njerš both continuity and renovation.

Objects of applied art, even if they are in themselves artefacts, have during history undergone interventions from the ‘pure’. This ‘pure’, particularly when it is a matter of decoration, has spread across their epidermis as a kind of added value. Thus the painted intervention on the form and matter of the cup, the plate and the vase was a kind of reward on top of the immediate service. It emphasised the presence and personality of the object and at the same time, by virtue of some inbuilt dream vision, led away from it. In use, the picture would often vanish, concealed by fruit, flower, food and drink. When the object was liberated from its service and brought back to itself, the picture too would come back. Thus a field of inconstant presence was created. But if the object, in the very design and purpose, was liberated from practical use, if only the shape of it was remembered, all the same, what would be linger of this omitted belongingness to a kind would be, like a spice, just this little ambiguity, some little tension in the definition, some small defiant distancing from the metaphysical offer of canvas or paper. A painted plate. Wonderful Renaissance scenes full of ochre and azure. What is it for? It is a picture. But a painting that is given with an atavistic sense of a function. That suggests immediate communication and attains a more intimate status in the space of life.

The ceramic art of Ljerka Njerš has gone through very various phases, but even when it appeared in the remembered forms for practical service, it was always a precious object, with its own unique existence as purpose. The surfaces could be smooth or volumes that were ultimately supple, the glazes and finishes lastingly absorbed the look with their rich and yet tender colourism, and all the roughness of the world was imprinted on the inexhaustible changes of the surfaces. In the works of Ljerka Njerš there is a very fruitful play of intended design and fortuity, of technology as sharer in the ultimate artfulness of the work. There is something of the Art Nouveau trust in the unexpected included in the artist’s intentions. It is not surprising that it was in Klimt in particular that she found historical kinship, in the blending of precision and spilling, of legible narrative motif and ornament, of line and coloured wave. And the art of the Far East absolutely comes within the panorama of her affinities and promptings, discerned in the speed and accuracy of her notation of the seen motif, as well as before eternity, and in the allusive ideograms of space. Ljerka Njerš neglects neither the exterior nor the interior surface of the object, inducing the eye to glide and yet to descend into the depths and the voids. Every object of hers engages time and is experienced as a journey.

A separate chapter of her luminous travels is composed of the objects in glass. The soul of the substance intensifies the power of colour, the beauty of iridescence opens up some aerial zones of powerful lyrical charges. The same thing holds true for the painted silks, which spread forth fabulous landscapes either in the rectangle of the painting or when enveloping the body.
Companionship with substances requires a certain quietness. In these objects, much of the author’s silence is on display. And yet this stillness is extremely musical, which will certainly be discerned by the eye that listens.
Željka Čorak

PARALLAX ART FAIR - LONDON - 2016.

LJERKA NJERŠ participates in major international exhibitions Paralax Art Fair held in Chelsea Town Hall where she meets colleagues from numerous countries. Experience of many curious audience adds a new dimension. She exposed 20 works: paintings, ceramics, glass. And her latest works - paintings on silk.

2015.

THE INTERNATIONAL TRUST FOR CROATIAN MONUMENTS - CONCERT 09.06.2015.

A WOMAN'S WORK: THE MERCER ART GALLERY, HARROGATE - Jane Sellars

Njers was born in Begov, Croatia and lives and works in Zagreb where she studied art to become a painter, printmarker and ceramist who has exhibited whidely throughout Europe. This study of flowers was made at the Curwen Studio, London with Stanly Jones.

Hommage to the beauty of baked earth

The beauty woven into works of Ljerka Njerš

Starting from watercolor, through oil paintings, paper over canvas, Ljerka Njers the most researched and find opportunities, often innovative, ceramics-the oldest technique of human creativity. She achieved the kind of luxury, uniqueness and wealth, expressing admiration and personal music, high culture and humanity, qualities which are permeated to her work. Ljerka Njers never is going along with art fads deliberate impoverishment of forms and procedures, simplicity and rawness that are in various stages of creation mainstream. Her personal eminence over the tracking of current transient ideas of theory was enough very dependent on the history that applied art that is taught, and now it seems, the permanent values ​​(elite) art. Working in silk, glass, ceramics, graphics or any other material and appropriate techniques and technologies that expresses Ljerka Njers, presents its full personality, originality and integrity of the thought and realized works.

If we look at the latest creations by Ljerka Njerš on silk, we can say only one thing: an artist over the years of its activities realized recognizable signature. The softness of moves, finesse of color, elegance of composition, complexity and simplicity of motives, picturesque atmosphere, clear messages, all of which he saw in the work of Ljerka Njerš and when pictures acts, adopts cityscapes, pays crimes celebrities or famous weather or when fighting against war and injustice-is behind it all built, cultivated and distinctive beauty. It is the silk glinted same freshness and ease what is created in the heat of the glass, baked clay or structured in the fire of an ancient technique of raku...

Acts of Ljerka Njers have that magical attraction; decoration that is not sweet, but the modern fruit rich historical heritage of applied art, which along with practical things cherished and high dose of luxury most refined taste. Here elegance in this exhibition reveals a photographer Visnja Serdar, which is embellished with details Glass Container of Ljerka Njers and them alone artist finished painting and turned into a unique handicrafts. Ljerka Njers the master and unrivaled, and although she preferred certain forms of vases, bowls, handbags and brooches, all gave their seal of academic painter who feels the shape and wisely and calmly, yet knowingly and spontaneously, drawing paint. Autonomous and original Ljerka Njers work became the inspiration for many designers, to adults and children alike.

Pottery workshop kindergarten Source in Samobor, which, along with numerous guests artists, has been active for twenty years, and whose anniversary is marked this exhibition, has achieved successful cooperation with Ljerka Njerš. Respectable work of the artist, her approach to art, especially ceramics and forms and special techniques that permanently mark and make authentic and distinctive, many times was an immediate model for learning and work in Izvor ceramics workshop. That's why Ljerka Njers invited to as a guest-Presenters that her work contribute ceremony of a small, but valuable anniversary and exhibits together with the participants the pottery workshop. Not to be revealed followers or recognized influences, but to emphasize the love for creativity and beauty as the abiding fruit. All participants will, I believe with sincerity, acknowledging that creative work rewarding. The range is not important or reach, is less important individual artistic talent in this twenty-year activity of the most important is the realization of high-quality working conditions and leadership in order to satisfy the innate human need for creativity, for handicrafts, for work which aims to pure joy.
Branka Hlevnjak

2014.

Highlights of Reflection - Gallery of city Krapina, KRAPINA from December the 12./2014. – January the 10./2015

Ljerka Njerš’s artistic oeuvre undoubtedly represents one of the most heterogeneous but at the same time one of the most homogeneous visual art experiences in the contemporary Croatian art. The fullness of style, shapes and artistic handwriting have ranked high within the context of the artistic quality and inventiveness particular to her métier through all the author’s creative phases. Art critics have never been indifferent to her constant inclination to experiment through different materials and media of expression as well as to the ease with which she has been able to transfer her creative and mental energy into material; they have always believed that in Ljerka Njerš’s work there ought not to be a strict dividing line between the so-called high, i.e. pure art and applied arts. Ljerka Njerš has continuously been moving the traditional boundaries of ceramic art, art glass and multi-colour monotypes by using the extraordinary ability to synthesise the medium of art and invention, which typically has gone beyond the so-called material limitations. We could say that sometimes even the best naked-eye observers can hardly discern whether they have a drawing, monotype, watercolour or clay and porcelain before them.
Likewise, while viewing different artistic artefacts by this author, the observer cannot remain immune to the fact that she often paints on ceramics, she paints on glass and tries hard to manage the impression of volume and space through sequencing of background planes in her landscape drawings, monotypes of nudes or small relief porcelain tiles. Her entire artistic oeuvre is a big, purposeful synthesis that helps her overcome and bypass any strict rules and restrictions of the creative achievements in an almost programmatic, radical (in the true spirit of the legacy of the artistic avant-garde) fashion. Such a lasting interest in “polyvalent media and techniques” (Ivanka Reberski) has proved that an outstanding artist is gifted with high creative combining ability, which definitely requires untouched areas where imagination and inventiveness can be freely expressed.
The idea of the selection presented by Ljerka Njerš at this exhibition is to offer what is best and authentic in every segment of her artistic work, to offer the items that perfectly reflect the level of both craftsmanship and poetic inventiveness. While her artistic oeuvre is undoubtedly complex if perceived in terms of material and media, it is nevertheless complete in terms of style and subject, that is their reading and comprehension. The subjects of a reclining and sitting nude, flowers and landscapes have featured this oeuvre through decades, with delicate variations in fitting a nude for floral frame, with expanding the theme of a nude or double nude toward metaphoric images of the Garden of Eden, with reducing floral ornament to a single leaf or a few flowers or with more accentuated stylization of the subjects of plants and landscape in more abstract layers of a painting, painted porcelain or ceramics. The seemingly realistic world of Ljerka Njerš has been revealing to us in its visual complexity experiences of different historical and art periods and styles: a great stylistic legato, which can also be seen at this exhibition, has the echo of the stylization of Etruscan shapes and those dating back to antiquity, Renaissance impulses of the sensualistic world view and Matisse’s and Picasso’s pure line drawing. As Ivanka Reberski could not have said it better – while she was writing about Ljerka Njerš’s artistic oeuvre – that “in our visual art practice we haven’t had the opportunity to see such a sublime purity of lines and shapes, whether it be in floral motifs, female figure or landscape since the periods of Secession and Art Deco and there are few from that epoch that could match her.” Her artistic expressiveness, lyricism and sensuality are delicately balanced by a careful selection of tonal range that is reduced to only a few colours with a special emphasis on some complementary pairs of colours or deep and saturated tonal registers of green, blue, red and brown. This naturally led her to the artistic hygiene of Eastern calligraphy, especially to the tradition of Chinese drawings from the dynasty period – as pointed out by Josip Depolo, where the reduction of painted forms of abstract gestures served as a refined complement to porcelain tiles and Raku ceramics.
She used to be closer to Fauvist colours and linear stylization of a nude with black contour lines, with large areas of bright colours on ceramic bowls and plates as well as with particular insisting on the development of ornaments in material. As for Ljerka Njerš’s graphic sensibility, it appeared in the process of printing leaves and lace on the surface of porcelain, thus setting some completely new form parameters –previously unknown - in the contemporary Croatian ceramics. Small relief and usable plastics contained as much power and energy as big glass plates or large format nude drawings. Whatever medium or material this artist’s exceptional inventiveness is shown through, her tendency towards harmony, proportions and balance is clearly visible in the work of art composition. The images of the sky and the earth/landscape or a nude and landscape are often in the golden ratio proportions, regardless of whether we have a painted ceramic or porcelain plate, a monotype or a drawing before us. Painted parts always have carefully defined empty white space or empty space on ceramic-porcelain-glass surface. None of the stages in Ljerka Njerš’s creative work are characterised by excessive narativeness, fear of empty space or accentuated decorative features of shapes and tonal palette that disguises the lack of artistic invention.
This vitalistic and positive principle of creation can be sensed in every aspect of this artistic oeuvre; from references to mythological goddesses in the studies of nudes to the ongoing dedication to the motifs of nature that speak about the power of constant renewal and the creation of new life. In each bowl, plate or drawing by this artist an equal level of artistic and life energy is pulsating as if the dark moments of our life have never existed or been stored. However, that is not a shortcoming of this outstanding oeuvre; in actual fact, it points out to us rarely encountered power of artistic talent and invention.
Iva Körbler

EXHIBITION CASTLE HOLY CROSS ZAČRTJE

On Friday, 22 February, special program in gallery of Ljerka Njerš

On Friday, 22 February, from 10.30 to 14.00 pm we invite you to visit the gallery of Ljerka Njerš in ŽepČe.
Students and employees of CSC's Don Bosco on that day will mark the birthday of the famous Croatian and international artists, ceramist and painter, Ljerke Njerš with commemorative program.
Ljerka Njerš's Gallery is located adjacent to the entrance to the cinema hall of the House of Culture.
For this occasion special photo of students who have shaped the initials famous artist who was born in Zepce was created.

Launch of monograph "Ljerka Njerš" author by Prof. dr. Ivanka Reberski at the Museum of Arts and crafts

The Museum of Arts and Crafts presented the monograph "Ljerka Njerš," author by dr. sc. Ivanka Reberski, art historians, scientific advisors, retired, author of numerous monographs, studies, retrospective and monographic exhibitions of Croatian painting 20th century. Monograph was promoted by academic Tonko Maroević and prof. Mate Maras. Publisher is ULUPUH.
Monograph systematically reviews the chronological sequence and evolution of complex artistic oeuvre Ljerka Njerš, painter and one of the most eminent, internationally renowned Croatian ceramist, who, with her varied artworks sensitive poetry and peculiar expressions present in the local and international art scene for more than half a century. At 264 lavishly illustrated pages, present her body of work since 1958. to date. Ljerka Njerš in her approach brilliantly reconciles both her fundamental vocation ceramist and painter. She graduated the School of Applied Arts (Ceramics Division) in Zagreb, in the class of known ceramist Blanka Dužanec. She studied painting at the Fine academy of art in Zagreb and graduated in the class of professor Marin Tartaglia. She has been working as a professional freelance artist and regularly exhibits in exhibitions at home and abroad. In addition to many group, she had more than 80 solo exhibitions. With study tours, participates in many symposiums and meetings. Since 1985. participate in auctions of contemporary ceramics known London house Cristie's and Bonham's. She's a member of the Croatian Association of Artists and ULUPUH, and the Society of Designer and Craftsman in London.
"LJERKA NJERŠ" monograph, magazine ZAGREB, My Town, 1.ožujka.2012.
Acts that excite vitalist force ancient "bakantica" from which glides dew on the ceramic flower pots and magical glasses Ljerka Njerš were reason enough that Museum of Arts and Crafts on Wednesday at the hour becomes dreamy corner of Croatian culture. Presentation of the monograph of the great artists "creative adventure in color and fire" published by Ulupuh packed into crowded museum was nonetheless an indication that Croatian culture, despite the poverty and exile media at the expense of the general trivialization of life, not on your knees! Maybe more than two hundred people came to pay tribute to world-renowned artists, the cult of personality Croatian ceramics, which was exhibited in the museum 1983. and 2007. years, recalled museum director Miroslav Gasparovic. "It is the one that is rich encyclopedia of life from the pen of Dr. Ivanka Reberski which for years followed the creation of Ljerka Njerš, equally important in Croatian and European context. Careful observation of expression and transformation techniques, develop motives from the figure of woman and flower motives across the landscape of Yorkshier, Portugal and Croatian, Zagreb panoramas, to the fascinating works in glass, etc. Reberski wrote a book that shows how the country's purifying element fire occurs world that emanates pure beauty ", said among other things, Dr. Tonko Maroević. Thanking artists and many contributors, especially designer Zlatko Salopek and Djurdja Kovačić and deserve, for the bibliography, Dr. Ivanka Reberski reminded that the work on the book began in 2004. year. Ljerka Njerš singled out not just as a doyen of Croatian sculpture of the biggest names in Croatian ceramics, but also as a great painter and the ease with changing styles and special techniques that no one had dealt with. With read a congratulatory telegram President Ivo Josipovic, with a lot of emotion about the artists spoke and Mate Maras, on behalf Ulupuh which won the lion's share of the book of John Bakal after which the artist thanked everyone for their support and coming.
"PURE BEAUTY WORLD" Marina Tenžera, VJESNIK, 23.veljače 2012.
Photo by: Višnja Serdar
Photo by: Marko Čolić

London - participation in an exhibition in honor of Ruđeru Boškoviću

2.12.2011.

TWO ANNIVERSARIES – from text of prof. Ivica Martinović
Focuses on the relationship Ruder Boskovic and the Royal Society, this is an exhibition organized on the occasion of two high Anniversary: 300th Bošković's birth anniversary and the 250 anniversary of his election to membership of Royal Society. The first initiative for the exhibition gave by Lady Jadranka (Njerš) Beresford Peirse, founder of International Trust for Croatian Monuments and carefully followed the path of her first exhibition draft in June 2010 to achieve. Dr. Felicity Henderson, Exhibition and Events Menager in the Centre for the History of Scince, readily supported this exhibition project, all librarians u Royal Society expressed to me affability and hospitality during the work at the library. Two Croatian contemporary artist painter Viktor Šerbu i ceramist Ljerka Njerš willingly responded to my call to enrich Boskovic iconography. To all of them I express gratitude for the support for the realization of this exhibition. Selected exhibits illustrate the various dimensions of Boscovich's presence in the British Isles: last question Newton's Optics as large inspiration young Jesuit, collaboration with the English scientists Christopher Maire i James Stuart in Rome, Encounters in England in the second half of 1760., relationship with the Royal Society in 1770is, Boscovich reception of natural from Priestley's philosophy of the early 20th century. Therefore exhibition on Croatian member of the Royal Society offers an exciting story of the development of science from Newton to JJ Thomson.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY
and
THE INTERNATIONAL TRUST FOR CROATIAN MONUMENTS

have pleasure in inviting you to the opening of the exhibition

ROGER BOSCOVICH AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY

The Royal Society
6 – 9 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5AG

Wednesday 23 November 2011
5.30 – 7.30 pm

His Excellency The Croatian Ambassador Dr Ivica Tomic
and Professor John Barrow FRS
will give an address at 6 pm

02.09.2009.

The City of Donja Stubica, Donja Stubica Tourist Board and Kajkaviana Donja Stubica are pleased to invite you to the opening of Ljera Njerš's exhibition of paintings: "Flowers from 1959 to 2009".

The exhibition opens on saturday, September 12 at 12 noon in the Stubički Golubovec castle, Donja Stubica. Višnja Slavica Gabout will be opening the exhibition. Programme: Kostadinka Velkovska i Toni Eterov

The exhibition will remain open until 11 October 2009 and you will be able to view it every day from 9 - 16 pm.

Photographs from the exhibition opening in Žepče

16.10.2008.

10.10.2008. Ljera Njerš's exhibition opening in Žepče

17.09.2008.

As a part of the celebration of the 550. anniversary of the first record of the name Žepče, during a symposium, at the Catholic school center "Don Bosco", Ljerka Njerš's exhibition will be held (paintings and ceramics). The exhibition opens on friday, October 10 at 12 noon, and remains on view for a month.

International Contemporary Ceramics, Knightsbridge, 16 Apr 2008

16.04.2008.

The sale will comprise of 285 lots ranging from works by the pioneer potters, including Bernard Leach and William Staite Murray, through to contemporary works by Elizabeth Fritsch, Edmund de Waal and Gordon Baldwin.